Kristen Campbell Makes Cheesecake Batter

Forks up, Phoenix! Chow Bella and Roosevelt Row present the third annual Pie Social Saturday, November 3rd, from 2 to 6 p.m. on Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix. We've got an all-star line up of bakers making pies for you to taste, and from now til Pie Social, we'll introduce them to you, one by one.

For half the week Kristen Campbell, the baker and pastry chef at St. Francis, adopts the sleep cycle of the average American vampire. She's nocturnal. When we meet up with her we also realize quickly that she's not as chatty as other chefs tend to be. Then again, when you work alone in a kitchen during the hours of night when most of the world is tucked away in bed, it's probably a good thing to not be overly talkative.

Which isn't to say that Campbell isn't a friendly and charming woman - because she is. What it means is that she's the kind of chef the world could probably use more of, not focused on ego or making her name the next big thing, just trying to turn out great food that people will enjoy eating.

It also means that it took us over an hour to tease out one not so tiny detail about her: Kristen Campbell is a secret cowgirl.

"I can dress like a city girl and I can talk like a city girl," she says with a shrug. "But I can't always pull it off."

She has us fooled for more than an hour. Then again, at 1 a.m. we aren't at our most perceptive.

And yes, that's correct. We dropped in on Kristen during the beginning of her midnight to 7 a.m. shift, which meant rolling back out of bed around midnight and driving over to the restaurant on all but empty city streets. We knew chefs are notorious for having crazy hours, but really?